We’re honored to have Henry Island Guesthouse included in the current issue of Residential Design Magazine, showcasing the winners of the 2024 Residential Design Architecture Awards. In recognizing the guesthouse with an honor award, the jury praised “the wonderful layering of the exoskeleton” and detailing throughout the project.

The guesthouse responds to our clients’ desire to create flexible space for hosting family and friends during extended stays on the island, and for a sensitively scaled dwelling that relates to the vocabulary and materials of the original home on the property, designed by our practice in 2012. The gentle slope allowed us to anchor one end of the building into the earth and cantilever the other above grade, minimizing disturbance to the ground while creating a distinct character for each of the two bedrooms – one responds to the quiet intimacy of the forest, and the other looks out to filtered views of the nearby bay. Inspired by the main residence’s covered breezeway, we conceived of the guesthouse living area as a covered porch flanked by the bedrooms. Large sliding glass doors pocket into the walls, opening the space to take in the sights, smells, and sounds of the island. Slender steel columns, exposed timber beams, and seamless indoor-outdoor movement relate to key features of the original home.

Project collaborators included Hoxie Huggins Construction and PCS Structural Solutions, with photography by Aaron Leitz and Benjamin Benschneider.